Mansion – Piedmont Historic Homes

This Week’s Best: An 1871 Italianate on the National Register, a Notable Architect’s Bungalow and a Relatively Affordable MCM

September 7, 2025

This week’s most notable new listing was built by a member of Alamance County’s Holt family in 1871. Sunny Side, 2834 Bellemont Alamance Road, was originally owned by Lawrence Shackleford Holt (1851-1937), a third-generation member of the pioneering mill owners. they were to 19th-century Alamance County what the Scotts were to 20th-century Alamance, although the Holts produced only one governor (Thomas, 1891-1893) compared to the two Governor Scotts (Kerr, 1949-1953, and his son Bob, 1969-1973).

The house is way down on the south side of the village of Alamance, an Italianate with well preserved Gothic Revival details.

This Week’s Best: An 1825 Cottage in Milton And in Eden a 1972 MCM and a 1928 Brick Foursquare

August 31, 2025

It was an interesting week up along the Virginia border. A cottage built in 1825 came up for sale at $349,900 in Milton. There are now six 19th-century houses for sale in Caswell County, including three in Milton.

Also, two of the week’s most interesting new listings are in Eden. A striking 1928 brick foursquare in the Leaksville historic district was listed Monday for $550,000. Its original owner was a surgeon and a founder of Leaksville Hospital. The next day, a 1972 Mid-Century Modern came onto the market for the first time. The current owner built the house 53 years ago and has lived in it ever since.

This Week’s Best: A Major 1912 Mansion in Reidsville and ‘H&G’ to Two B&B’s

August 24, 2025

It was an uncommonly boring week until Thursday. That’s when a listing appeared for Belmont, the most notable of the three houses in the the Robert Payne Richardson Houses Historic District in Reidsville. The Neo-Classical Belmont, 1700 Richardson Drive, is a standout in every way — architecturally significant (“an opulent example of the style, one of the finest in the state”), perched up on a hill overlooking the road, wonderfully maintained, with a range of features from a spectacular ballroom to a beach volleyball court (the mansion is now a wedding venue, after all). If you’re looking for about 9,000 square feet of truly impressive history on almost 10 acres, Belmont is up for $2.4 million, a relatively reasonable $256 per square foot. You could pay a lot more, per square foot, for a lot less (see below).

It was ‘H&G’ for two B&B listings this week.

4 Historic Homes, for Sale for Years, that Just Haven’t Sold

June 1, 2025

Here are four historic homes that have been for sale for a conspicuously long time. They include a very historic 1798 National Register property in Forsyth County, an 1870 house in historic Milton, an intriguing 1898 mansion in Troy and a 1925 mansion in Greensboro’s Irving Park.

There are a variety of reasons why thy haven’t sold. Some are obvious — $600 per square foot is awfully high for any house, and Milton and Troy are a little remote from the hotter real-estate markets in the state. But the Greensboro house is a mystery. Click on the links for the complete listings.

Competition to Buy Historic Homes Is Building, Especially in Winston-Salem

April 30, 2025

Sold for $55,000 over asking price
Sold for $20,000 over asking price
Sold for $22,000 over asking price
Sold for $15,000 over asking price
Sold for $31,000 over asking price
Sold for $15,000 over asking price
Sold for $26,000 over asking price
Sold for $9,500 over original asking price
Sold for $11,000 over asking price
Sold for $101,000 over asking price

It may seem like current trends — interest rates, especially — are disadvantaging both homebuyers and sellers these days. There are some interesting trends emerging, though. April has seen an uptick in the number of historic homes for sale. It’s largely seasonal, of course, but the sheer number of homes coming onto the market seems greater than the typical spring upturn.

At the same time, competition among buyers is becoming more common. This month, 14 historic-home sales have closed at prices above asking prices, eight of them in Forsyth County. Compared to recent years, that’s a lot. (There also have been a few closings with conspicuously lower prices than listed. There’s more to say about that next time.) Here are eight of the houses that have sold significantly above their asking prices this month, plus the big winner of the year, which closed at 67 percent over its asking price in January. Click on the links for more information.

Sold: Ayershire, an Impressive 1935 Mansion in Sedgefield, $2.8 million

April 14, 2025

For sale, on and off, for 17 years, one of Sedgefield’s most extraordinary homes has been sold. Ayershire, the 1935 mansion at 3215 N. Rockingham Road, had been in the family of textile executive Nathan and Martha Adams Ayers since it was built.

The price was $2.8 million. That figure works out to $212 per square foot, far less than the price of many relatively ordinary houses these days. But there just aren’t many buyers looking for 13,000 square-foot mansions. The buyers in this case live a half-mile away in Sedgefield, so we can hope that they appreciate its value and that Ayershire won’t meet the same fate as two similarly impressive multi-million dollar mansions — Adamsleigh in Sedgefield and the J. Spencer Love House in Greensboro — that were bought in recent years and then torn down by owners with more arrogance than sense.

2 Extraordinary Restoration Opportunities

August 19, 2024

It’s no surprise that it’s taking a while to find buyers for these two grand houses. Both are large projects that will require a lot of effort, vision and money. Neither, however, appear to be absolute, falling-down wrecks, and they both have the potential to be well worth the investment.

They both have stories. The Merry Oaks Hotel in Chatham County was once the center of a small but lively railroad community. The Charles T. Sinclair House in Carthage was built in 1904 and has never been sold. And with some luck and hard work (and money), they may have glorious futures ahead of them as well.

A Digression: The Heritage Brothers Big Three-Ring Trained Animal Circus, April-September 1926

August 16, 2024

This is a digression — there’s an interesting historic house that’s marginally involved — but who knew that two guys from Burlington started a big-time circus? Here’s a brief history, necessarily brief as there’s not a lot of information about it online (or probably anywhere else). I’ll post this to Wikipedia if I can figure out the coding on the footnotes.

The Heritage Brothers Circus had the distinction of being the only circus ever organized in Burlington. Circus veterans and brothers Albert and Arthur Heritage put the show together in the winter of 1925-26. It began operations by April 6, 1926, when it visited Raleigh. It closed on September 1, 1926, in Stafford, Kansas. The Greensboro Record reported that “it is thought that the show closed because it was not making good financially, as there were many misfortunes at different points in the itinerary.”

An Unexpected New Direction for Greensboro’s Double Oaks, a 1909 National Register Mansion

August 2, 2024

One of Greensboro’s grandest historic mansions has been sold to a new owner with a new vision. Known as Double Oaks Bed and Breakfast for much of the past 25 years, the house has been bought by Down Home North Carolina, a statewide community-organizing group working “to build multiracial and working-class power in small towns and rural communities across North Carolina.” The house will serve as a community center, event venue and meeting place for the organization.

Update, August 9, 2024: Here are their plans.

“Together, we are taking action to increase democracy, grow the good in our communities, and pass a healthy and just home down to our grandbabies,” its website says.

The organization paid $1.5 million for the house, 204 N. Mendenhall Street. The purchase was made possible by years of successful fund-raising, Down Home said. Among its recent major gifts was a $250,000 grant from the Katz Amsterdam Foundation in Colorado for “increasing voter registration in rural communities of color and addressing disinformation and voter disenfranchisement.”

The Most Intriguing Historic-Home Sale So Far in 2024 Was Quite Discreet

July 16, 2024

The most impressive historic home sold in the Triad this year may be the 1920’s Tudor Revival mansion in Winston-Salem designed by Charles Barton Keen for Dr. Frederick Moir Hanes and Elizabeth Peck Hanes. It’s definitely the most intriguing. It was a very private sale; the house wasn’t listed publicly. It sold for $1.84 million in April. It hadn’t been for sale since 1972.

Frederick Hanes was one of the most distinguished members of the Hanes family, though he never worked in the family businesses started by his father and uncle. Fred was a highly accomplished physician and teacher and a major figure at Duke in the 1930s and ’40s. He headed the department of medicine at the medical school and was chief physician at Duke Hospital. Betty, a former nurse, was greatly involved with the nursing school. “Betty Hanes was really a great person,” Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans said.

Fred’s influence at Duke extended beyond the med school. The Sarah P. Duke Gardens were his idea.

Piedmont Historic Homes

Historic homes for sale in the Piedmont Triad

Category: Mansion